Sheldon Whitehouse stepped into the well of the Senate just after Rep. Joe Barton's ridiculous apology to BP and laid out how deeply "corporate tentacles" have reached into our regulatory agencies. Unlike Republicans, his argument was not to argue for deregulation, but to remove corporate influence from regulatory agencies and build a wall between them. His argument was remarkable in its simplicity, passion, and truth.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The scope, the extent, the insidious nature of corporate influence in regulatory agencies of government--this question of regulatory capture--is something we should attend to here. It is the lesson, and it raises the question beyond the Minerals Management Service: How far does this corporate influence reach into our agencies of government?

The wealth of the international corporate world is staggering. The five biggest oil companies just this quarter posted profits of $23 billion--that is a 23 with 12 zeroes behind it--in just one quarter.

Sen. Whitehouse' example of corporate resources available to influence elections puts it into perspective:

The Republican appointees on the Supreme Court just overturned decades of precedent and 100 years of practice to give these big corporations freedom to spend unlimited funds in our American elections.

Put it to scale. Consider $23 billion of pure profits just in one quarter by big oil, and compare: The Obama and McCain campaigns together spent about $1 billion in the last election. Do the math. For 5 percent of one quarter's profits, big oil could outspend both American Presidential campaigns. That may be some politician's idea of a happy day because that is who they work to please, but it is wrong and it needs to be stopped.

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